CMOS RF/DC Voltage Detector for on-Chip Test

In this paper we present a framework for RF testing of a radio front-end using CMOS RF/DC voltage detectors connected between RF nodes and a DC test bus. The detector is designed and implemented in 0.13mum CMOS process and it achieves high input impedance, low power, small area and wide dynamic range. Measurement results show that internal RF nodes can be accessed without significantly degrading the chip performance. A verification procedure using an extra DC bus is proposed to verify that due to process variations all detectors are within an acceptable performance limit.